Review: Beauty in Winter

Beauty in Winter by Alexa Riley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book grabbed my attention because it mentioned two of my favourite things in romance novels: Beauty and the Beast inspiration (I can never say no to something that speaks of a Beauty and the Beast style story) and shifters (they’re my go-to fantasy creature in romance, the one thing I never grow bored of). Thus, through seeing the two thing sitting side-by-side in the synopsis, I knew I needed to give this one a read. It was screaming out for me to read it.

I’ll admit, despite how pulled in I was, a part of me was tentative. I love long detailed stories, and find myself rather nervous when entering a story that is completed in a mere handful of pages. I shouldn’t prejudice such stories, and yet I always fear that a book I can complete in under half hour will fail to leave me with the same kind of feelings that a tome that takes me hours to read will. Fortunately, Beauty in Winter managed to provide me with another example of how such a short story can fill you with so much. In fact, it’s probably one of my favourite romance reads of this length. Despite completing this book in well under half an hour, I experienced so much throughout.

The characters were a lot of fun. The romance was steamy. There were many emotions experienced. Most importantly, for me, was that the story provided something more than sex scenes. Yes, it made up the majority of the book – however, there was also a story. Oftentimes, I find the story gets loss within all the body on body action, but such was not the case with this one. Although you knew where it was going, even though there were no surprises to be found, this one managed to give a fulfilling story.

Honestly, I enjoyed it so much. Despite being happy with the story, a part of me (as always with stories of this length) wishes it had been longer. Not that it wasn’t wonderful, oh no. My desire for the story to be longer has nothing to do with the story being lacking. Rather, I feel as though this story had the potential to be even more wonderful. I could imagine it as a truly amazing full-length novel. It really was amazing considering how short it was, and I can only imagine the kind of beauty that would be found if this story was made into something more.

Overall, a truly wonderful quick read.

View all my reviews